Description

This is the first game of the series that conquered legions of fighter fans from all over the world. The King of Fighters '94 joins together fighters from other SNK Corporation franchises: Art of Fighting (Ryo Sakazaki, Robert Garcia, Takuma Sakazaki, Yuri Sakazaki, King), Fatal Fury (Terry Bogard, Andy Bogard, Joe Higashi, Mai Shiranui, Kim Kaphwan) and Ikari Warriors (Ralf Jones, Clark Steel, Heidern), as well as totally new fighters such as Kyo Kusanagi, Benimaru Nikaido, and Goro Daimon (from the Japanese team).

The King of Fighters '94 is notable in that it is one of the first known fighting games that pits a team of fighters against each other in single combat. Each team consists of three fighters for each player, the winner being the player who is able to eliminate the other team first. Each active character can charge up "Art of Fighting" style in order to gain access to "Desperation Moves", or "DMs" (moves which operate very much like Street Fighter's Super Combos). Playing against the computer, the player must defeat all 8 teams in the game in order to reach the final boss, Rugal Bernstein.

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References

During the story sequences before fighting against Rugal Bernstein, you can see a few statues of fighters that he had defeated in the past. If you look closely, you'll notice that one of the characters looks a lot like Guile, from Street Fighter II.

Capcom vs. SNK has a special easter egg related to this reference: If a fight between Guile and Rugal Bernstein occurs, they have a special intro where Guile destroys a statue of himself in front of Rugal before they start the fight.

Rugal Bernstein

Rugal Bernstein, the final boss, was originally intended to be a super boss who had the skills of all the characters in the game; however, space limitations prevented that, so the designers decided to give him two moves from the deadliest characters in the SNK universe at the time: Geese Howard's Reppuken, and Wolfgang Krauser's Kaiser Wave.

Title

Technically, this is not the first King of Fighters game. When Capcom introduced Street Fighter II in 1991, it was given the subtitle The World Warrior. SNK did not want to be outdone, and subtitled Fatal FuryKing of Fighters.